


Lost Girl

by JaceRMontague



Series: 30k in 30 days [8]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Drunken Confessions, Drunkenness, Emma is fucking drunk, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaceRMontague/pseuds/JaceRMontague
Summary: Regina is dragged out of bed at two in the morning when her neighbour, who just happens to be her ex, drunkenly knocks on the door asking for salt for some fries.





	

Regina rolled her eyes, turned her Netflix up louder and pulled her duvet tighter around herself. She relaxed and pushed herself further into the mattress, thinking the noise was finally over.

Just as she began to drift off to the Netflix playing in the background, the knocking started again.

‘I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE GINA!’ a slurred voice shouted from the other side of her apartment door.  ‘I’M NOT GOING TILL YOU ANSWER THE DOOR’

‘have mercy on me.’ Regina muttered to herself – or any deity that would listen -as she pushed the duvet of herself and rolled out of the bed, turning her tv off as she passed it. She walked slowly across the apartment before opening the door.  Even through the few inch gap that had opened the stench of whiskey hit Regina in the face. She opened the door properly and saw the state of her next-door neighbour standing in front of her. Emma was drunk and dishevelled looking. Her hair was tangled and her outfit was scruffy. She’d clearly been drinking since she’d clocked off from work at lunchtime.

Regina hated that she knew that Emma worked the night shift on the third week of every month and that she’d have the weekend off meaning that she’d go and spend her Friday drinking. She hated that she knew that Emma’s favourite was Bell’s with lemonade, though the blonde was known for polishing a bottle – or two – neat with ice. Or neat from the bottle. She hated that she knew that if you approached Emma after 5 in the evening on the third Friday of the month she probably wouldn’t even know how to get home even though she was usually only thirty seconds away from the stairs that led to her apartment. Regina hated that if you’d seen Emma seven months ago on a Friday, she’d be sober because she didn’t feel the need to spend her half day avoiding her home and the rest of her weekend sleeping of a hangover.

Seven months ago, Emma had had enough of a reason not to head downstairs and would instead sit in Regina’s lounge, the two talking or laughing or eating or they’d be found tangled between Regina’s bedsheets.

‘What do you want, Emma?’ she sounded exhausted and fed up even to her own hers. Though that was more than likely because she was. ‘It’s two in the morning.’

‘ACTUALLY- ‘Emma started but stopped to look at her phone. ‘its two twenty-one’

‘What do you want?’ Regina repeated with a sigh that turned into a yawn.

‘Salt.’

‘Salt?!’ Regina practically spat with the absurdity of the request.

‘Salt.’ Emma confirmed.

‘Why are you knocking on door at two twenty-one- ‘

‘twenty-two now.’ Emma corrected.

Regina glared at the blonde.

‘Why are you at my door at two twenty-two asking for salt?!’

‘I need salt?’ Emma stated incredulously as if Regina was the one being awkward and a downright pain in the ass.

‘Yes but why?’

‘I have fries that need salt.’

Regina slammed the door shut, pressed her head against it and took a deep breath.

The door began shaking under her head as Emma began knocking insistently at it again.

Regina opened the door once more.

‘If I get you salt will you leave me alone so I can go back to bed?’

Emma nodded.

Regina shut the door once more, walked to the kitchen, grabbed the salt from the kitchen, returned to the door, counted to ten, took a deep breath and passed the salt to the blonde standing the other side of the door.

‘Thank you.’ Emma said as she walked away. The best she could. Emma was mindlessly drunk and was struggling to down the hallway.

Regina watched as Emma walked down the corridor for fear the blonde fell and broke a bone or forgot how to stand back up.

Once Emma had reached her own door Regina shut hers and sat on the sofa behind her. She was too awake to go back to bed and so she pulled one of the blankets she had folded on the back of her sofa and wrapped it around her shoulders, she sat there thinking of the past, hers and Emma’s. The eighteen months they’d spent together, the way that they were basically paying two rents for no reason when Emma never went back to her own apartment, the way that Emma had freaked and walked away from Regina, and their relationship, when Regina had pointed this out and had asked Emma to officially move in. The seven month since then when the only times they’d seen each other was in the corridor when one would make an excuse or just walk straight past the other. When the only times they’d spoken was when their mail had ended up in the wrong mailbox.  How despite living on the same floor of the same building, they had gone from seeing each other each and every day to barely once a month.

After twenty minutes Regina realised that she hadn’t heard the distinctive ‘click-thud-thud’ which meant that Emma had locked her front door and kicked her boots across the room. No matter how sober Emma was this is what she did. Regina stood up from her spot on the sofa, her blanket still wrapped around her shoulders and opened her front door.

She saw the blonde sitting on the floor outside her apartment down the hall, drawing patterns in spilt salt while staring at the wall opposite her.

‘Em?’ Regina asked quietly.

Emma looked up, she was red eyed and tear stained though she was pretending she wasn’t. Regina played along with this. She always had. She walked down the corridor and crouched down next to Emma, she saw that Emma had been writing in the salt on the floor but Emma had covered them over when Regina crouched down. The only thing visible was ‘Egina’.

‘Yes, Regina?’ Emma’s voice was sturdy.

‘Why are you sitting in the hallway?’

‘I couldn’t find my key.’

‘So you planned on spending the night here?’

‘Pretty much. I was going to ask you to help but then I panicked and- ‘

‘and asked for salt?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Come on, idiot.’  Regina almost whispered as she stood up and offered Emma a hand.

She could see the blonde weigh up her options; spend the night at her ex’s or spend it in the hallway.

Regina sighed in relief when she felt Emma’s hand in her own.

She pulled Emma up and helped her down the corridor and into her own apartment.

She sat Emma down on the sofa and pulled the blanket from her own shoulders and wrapped it around Emma’s.

Regina went to the kitchen to make them both some coffee and to take a break to collect her thoughts. She knew that Emma needed somewhere to stay that night until they could ring mantainence but she also knew that she still loved the annoying blonde more than shed care to admit to anyone and that Emma was the one who broke up with her. That Emma broke her heart.

She picked up the two mugs of coffee and bought them back to the lounge where Emma was playing with the shoelace wrapped around her wrist.

Regina placed the coffees down and sat beside Emma on the sofa.

The two remained in silence until the steam had stopped rising from the coffees.

‘I’m sorry.’ Emma whispered, breaking the silence.

‘You should be, you got me out of bed.’ Regina joked.

‘No. Not that. Well. That too. But I’m sorry for walking away. When you asked me to move in? it was all I wanted. All I’d dreamed off.  I was waiting for you to ask me and then you did. And I panicked. Because no one’s ever wanted me before. And you did. And it was so overwhelming and I didn’t know what to do and I walked out and felt like a dick and I didn’t know how to fix it. So, I didn’t. and I’m sorry.’

By the time she’d finished talking Emma was crying again. It wasn’t the loud, messy kind of tears either. It was the silent, heartbroken kind. Regina could feel her heart aching. All she wanted to do was cup Emma’s face in her hands, wipe her tears away and kiss her. All she wanted to do was make her lost girl feel better. But she didn’t know that her heart could take another break. Not if Emma walked away again in the morning.

Admission or not, Emma had walked away once and Regina wasn’t sure Emma would stay if Regina asked her again.

Regina felt damp on her own face and realised that she was crying too.

‘In the morning,’ she started as she wiped her own tears away. ‘We’ll talk because right now, dear, you are too drunk and it is nearly- ‘Regina checked the time ‘Four in the morning. And I am too physically exhausted to stay awake for much longer. So, in the morning, after I’ve slept a little. And you’ve sobered up and taken an aspirin for the hangover you’re going to have. We’ll talk over pancakes and coffee.’

‘Blueberry choc-chip pancakes?’ Emma asked hopefully

‘Perhaps.’

Emma smiled.

Regina disappeared into her room and grabbed two of the pillows from her bed before returning to the lounge and placing them on the arm of the sofa, Emma automatically lay down, resting her head on the pillows and pulling the blanket Regina had draped around her tighter.

‘Tomorrow?’ The suddenly sleepy blonde asked.

‘Tomorrow.’ Regina confirmed as she went back into her bedroom.

 

When Regina woke up the next morning it took her a minute to realise why she felt like she hadn’t slept properly. Emma.

She slid out of the bed and walked into her lounge, trying not to rush.

The blanket and pillows Emma had used were stacked neatly on the arm of the chair. Regina felt her heart drop slightly before she spotted the blonde’s boots placed neatly next to her front door. Then she realised she could smell coffee and wandered into the kitchen.

There, she found Emma perched at the breakfast island, a mug of coffee steaming in front of her as she read the news on her phone. There was a second fresh mug of coffee on the counter. Regina picked it up and sat next to Emma. It was so natural, so them that it struck Regina just how much she had missed the domesticity that they had fallen into when they were a couple.

Once Regina had finished her coffee and woken up a little, she stood up, turned the coffee machine back on.

‘Pancakes?’ she asked.

Emma smiled.

‘Please.’

**Author's Note:**

> Keep smiling, guys.


End file.
